Robert Nairac: ICLVR begins first dig for soldier 'disappeared' by IRA in 1977
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The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLVR) is to launch the first dig for the Grenadier Guards captain today in the Faughart area of Co Louth.
The British Army officer is believed to have been abducted by the Provisional IRA while on an undercover operation in a pub in south Armagh in 1977 and taken across the border to Flurry Bridge in Co Louth where he was killed. His remains have never been found.
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Hide AdCapt Nairac is considered to be part of a group of 16 people, known as the Disappeared, who were killed and secretly buried by paramilitary groups.


In 2019, a preliminary examination of a site at Ravensdale Forest in Co Louth was carried out.
The ICLVR, which has located the remains of a number of the Disappeared, said it will be its first search for Capt Nairac.
It is to take place in the Faughart area, also in Co Louth.
Jon Hill, the lead investigator of the ICLVR, said while Capt Nairac is one of the highest profile of the Disappeared, they have had “very little to go on”.
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Hide Ad“We believe that we do now have sufficient credible information to warrant a search,” he said.
The search for Capt Nairac will be carried out on private land, and Mr Hill said he wanted to make it clear that neither the landowner nor the tenant have any connection with the decision to search that location.
“The area itself is relatively small, less than one acre, and farmland is inherently more stable than the bogland we have had to work on in other searches for the Disappeared,” he said.
SMEARS ‘WITHOUT FOUNDATION’
Crossmaglen man Kenny Donaldson, director of victims’ group the South East Fermanagh Foundation (SEFF) said: “The murder and disappearance of Captain Robert Nairac remains a talking point in almost every home across south Armagh and indeed much further afield.
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Hide Ad“Republicans have sought to portray him as a bogeyman of 'the Northern Ireland Troubles,' as a British state led assassin.
“They have attempted to link him to a number of heinous murders which time and time again has been proven to be without foundation, and often led by vindictiveness."
Today’s search, on a site which is part of an area of significant archaeological interest, is being support by Ireland’s National Monuments Service.
Mr Hill added: “The Nairac family have been told that a search is about to commence and we will of course keep them informed of any developments.”
He declined to say how confident they are about the search.
KINGSMILLS LINK?
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Hide AdThe IRA killed 10 Protestant workmen at Kingsmills in south Armagh in 1976.
Many years later, republicans began to claim that Capt Nairac was involved.
Sole survivor Alan Black said that the man giving orders for the IRA gunmen to open fire had an English accent. He previously told the News Letter that “the authorities were trying to blame all on Nairac and then it would come to a dead end and that would be it”.
However, he discounts Nairac’s involvement because the man barking orders was “squat and very well built” but in photographs Nairac was “more of an athlete”.
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Hide AdSteve Travers of the Miami Showband survived a loyalist attack which saw three of his colleagues killed in 1975. He noted that a man he believes to be an Army officer with a clear English accent gave orders to the gunmen.
However, he said he could never be certain whether or not it was Capt Nairac. “My distinct impression was that the officer I saw and heard had fair hair,” he said, in contrast to Nairac’s distinctly dark hair.
PREVIOUS EXAMINATION OF SITE IN 2019
In 2019 a veterans’ campaigner searching for Capt Nairac accused the government body responsible for the Disappeared of carrying out a “box ticking exercise”.
Former Grenadier Guard Alan Barry reported that specialist cadaver dogs had indicated human remains at a spot in Ravensdale Forest in Co Louth.
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Hide AdHowever, Independent Commission for the Location of Victims Remains spokesman Geoff Knupfer said at the time: “It was never a gravesite.”
The ICLVR has also reissued an appeal for information about other remaining Disappeared cases, including Joe Lynskey, Columba McVeigh and Seamus Maguire.
Contact the ICLVR on tel: 00353 1 602 8655, or [email protected] or by post to: ICLVR PO Box 10827. Crimestoppers can be contacted on 0800 555 111 or anonymously at crimestoppers-uk.org.